What’s New in 2025: Reading Challenge, Blog Plans & Giveaway Details!
What You’ll Find In This Article:
What's New With Us in 2025?
Hi everyone, Alex here. Been a very, very long time since we’ve posted something, but not because Stani and I have given up on the our book club, but mostly because we’ve been overwhelmed with a variety of other projects.
Thankfully, things have calmed down now and we can now get back to sharing content regularly here and across our social media channels.
As you might have noticed already, this post is takes a much more personal tone that what you’re probably used to with our articles. Well, there’s a reason for that. A couple of reasons, actually.
Firstly, we realized that our content was becoming quite stale. In our effort to optimize for SEO, optimize for trends, optimize for content we were forcing ourselves to write, we accidentally deviated from the reason “why” we actually started this blog. Which was, quite simply, that we love reading. And we love sharing our thoughts on what we’ve read.
So going forward, the content on the website is going to change a bit. Scratch that, it’s going to change a lot. No more impersonal and dry content, but unfiltered, and hopefully more genuine thoughts, which will make you laugh, cry, and probably wonder why we’ve waited so long to do this.
Or, you know, start throwing virtual tomatoes our way. No in-between, I guess, but that’s the direction we’re going with and if we have to clean a few stains from our shirts, so be it (just don’t aim for the head please!)
Right, so now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about what we’ve actually been to recently. Don’t worry, we’re not going to bore you with our personal lives, although the action-packed adventures of “going from the couch to bed everyday” is an Odyssey-worthy epic of grand proportions. What we are going to talk about is what we’ve been up to when it comes to the world of books!
At the start of 2025, I decided to challenge myself and finally do a Book Reading Challenge. With 2 kids, running several businesses, settling in a new country, and finally getting the chance to enjoy some sunny weather after 15 years in perpetual Dutch “grayness”, I didn’t really want to set the bar too high. Knowing some of the books I usually go for could be adequately classified as “chunky”, I decided to settle on the number 30.
I actually managed to rope one of my brothers to do the challenge with me. Well, it’s almost the end of July now and I can honestly say we did ourselves proud. My brother is currently on his 36th book and I’ve just finished my 40th! That’s right, overachiever in the house, y’all!
Needless to say, we’ll be pushing the envelope further, and aim for 60 by year’s end (which I think is fairly achievable, if we life doesn’t get in the way). But whether we reach that number or not, I’m already extremely proud of myself, as this is probably the most books I’ve ever read in a single year.
Naturally, I’ve been tracking my reading list with pen and paper, as I’m too lazy to update our Goodreads account. I know, I know, we should do that eventually, but there’s just something hauntingly beautiful in watching the empty piece of paper fill out with each new addition to the “read-pile”.
Blog Plan For The Rest of The Year
So, having read these 40 books, and having decided that Stani and I are taking the blog in a new direction, I had a fantastic idea of doing a series of book reviews for each book I’ve read, following the same principles I listed above - giving my unfiltered and honest opinion about what I liked, what I didn’t like, who my favorite character was, who I hated with a burning passion, and which book I can wholeheartedly recommend you read (or burn). Will this be quite interesting to write? Yes. Will I be burned at the stake by obsessed fandoms for potentially trashing their favorite smut authors? Probably.
So join us for the next 40+ articles as we explore anything from “TikTok made me buy it” books, to Classics, Fantasy series, romantasy, thrillers, and even books on philosophy (because we all need an existential crisis every once in a while).
I will now list all 40 books we’ve read so far. As we go on with our articles, I will update this list with hyperlinks for each article, so if you want to check out anything in particular, you’ll be free to do that. So without further ado, here is the list of books I’ve read so far in 2025!
“Snuff”, by Terry Pratchett
“It Ends With Us”, by Colleen Hoover
“The Master and Margarita”, by Mikhail Bulgakov
“Mort”, by Terry Pratchett
“Sunreach”, by Brandon Sanderson
“The Luminaries”, by Susan Dennard
“The Colour of Magic”, by Terry Pratchett
“1984”, by George Orwell
“Unseen Academics”, by Terry Pratchett
“Eric”, by Terry Pratchett
“The Whispering Dark”, by Kelly Andrew
“Interesting Times”, by Terry Pratchett
“Animal Farm”, by George Orwell
“The Book Eaters”, by Sunyi Dean
“The Alloy of Law”, by Brandon Sanderson
“Shadows of Self” by Brandon Sanderson
“The Bonds of Mourning”, by Brandon Sanderson
“Mistborn: The Secret History”, by Brandon Sanderson
“The Lost Metal”, by Brandon Sanderson
“They Both Die At The End”, by Adam Silvera
“Small Gods”, by Terry Pratchett
“The Greatest Short Stories”, by Leo Tolstoy
“The Greatest Works of Oscar Wilde”, by Oscar Wilde
“The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood”, by Howard Pyle
“Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland”, by W. B. Yeats
“The Light Fantastic”, by Terry Pratchett
“The Last Continent”, by Terry Pratchett
“Reaper Man”, by Terry Pratchett
“The Truth”, by Terry Pratchett
“Maskerade”, by Terry Pratchett
“Carpe Jugulum”, by Terry Pratchett
“Hogfather”, by Terry Pratchett
“Men at Arms”, by Terry Pratchett
“The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents”, by Terry Pratchett
“Pride and Prejudice”, by Jane Austen
“Moby Dick”, by Herman Melville
“The Little Prince”, by Antone de Saint-Exupery
“Tess of The d’Urbervilles”, by Thomas Hardy
“The Wind in the Willows”, by Kenneth Grahame
Giveaway Announcement
If you’ve made it this far in the article, congratulations! Your algorithm is likely messed for even recommending this, so you might want to get it checked out. But since you’re staying, you might as well get something our of it than simply listening to me prattle on.
To celebrate my achievement of actually completing my goal of 30 books in 2025, we will be doing a giveaway of 2 Leatherbound Classic Editions from the Barnes and Noble Leatherbound Classics Series! That’s right, and because we’re awesome, we’re going to cover shipping too!
So how can you participate?
Leave a comment down below, mentioning:
Your personal book challenge for 2025
How far along are you now?
What’s your favorite book so far?
Tag a friend who would love to have a Leatherbound Classic in their personal library.
(optional) follow-us on our Social Media channels and post the same comment on any of our latest videos. The more channels you post on, the more chances you have of getting picked up!
We will select the winners on the 1 October. You’ll receive a DM with further information on how to receive your prizes!
So let the games begin! (insert evil laughter here).
That’s it for today, folks! To sum up - we have 2 exciting initiatives for this year:
Our new series of unfiltered reviews on everything we’ve read so far in 2025
Our 2 Barnes and Nobel Leatherbound Classics Giveaway, starting today and going til 1 October 2025!
So join us for the review of our first book on the list, Lies We Sing To the Sea, by Sarah Underwood.
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